Benefiting from Incompetence

Remember this?

No way that connector is going through that hole, but I had no idea at all how to remove Molex pins. While I (through necessity not always of my own making) eventually got to where I could remove the tiny, fragile gold pins from the DB-style connectors, I had no idea what to do about these, nor did I have a tool for doing so. What I did have, though, was the benefit of incompetence. I postulated that I might be able to move the little locking pins by pressing on them with a small screwdriver. That didn't work. I couldn't even see the locking pins. As a last ditch effort, I resorted to just pressing down into the middle of the pins with the screwdriver. Lo and behold, that worked! It worked because I had failed to full seat the pins in the connector in the first place!

Let's hear it for incompetence!!

With that out of the way, I was able to finish the addition of the matching connector to the wires remaining in the airplane and press on with the rest of the avionics work. That included the installation of the very first avionics box, which I have taken to referring to as the J-box:

The next step was to attach the front pitot tube to the aft pitot tube, the counter-intuitively subtractive math of which equates to 1 + 1 = 1. The problem was that the aft pitot tube was, well, still well aft. I had not yet pushed it back through all of the wire bundles it had been removed from in an attempt to make more room for wires in the bundles, as it were. This was one of those "pay me now or pay me later" deals I made with Van's, and 'later' was now. It was to be worse that Van's had intended; I had actually pulled the pitot tube further back than Van's had suggested, thinking at the time "Gee, that made this pretty easy. Why didn't they suggest this?"

Well, now I know. It was a miserable job to get that tube back up to the front, and the worst of is was that portion that I had done voluntarily.

It was eventually finished, of course, which is the nature of this kind of project. You do what you gotta do 'til it's done.

Moving on, it was to be a series of installing various Skyview modules that were previously built into the old D-180. As much extra work this has been, I am far happier to have the Skyview than the D-180, and these modules are one reason why. One of them breaks? Replace just the module, not the entire avionics suite. Some new capability comes out? Buy just the new module! Or don't - it's up to you. Much, much better this way.

The first to be installed was the Engine Management System, or EMS. This unit will accept various analog inputs from engine probes of various design and purpose, convert them to digital values, and pass them along to the main Skyview box for graphical display.

Next was a big backup battery that will keep all of the displays and modules working if there is a massive electrical failure on the airplane. That's a handy thing to have, right? It should have been easy as pie to install, what with it being only two screws and nuts.

The second screw didn't go well.

A second attempt at the second screw went even worse.

Even though I happened to have a copious number of spares available (these are the same type and size of screw that hold the spinner on the RV-6, so I have a bag of them handy at all times) it was getting tiresome. The problem appeared to be an excess of resistance from the lock nut. I thought a little lubrication might help.

It did.

Right next to that goes the USB plug that will be used to update the software that provides the smarts of the Skyview. For the D-180, this service was provided by a serial connector safely locked behind the cover of the tunnel. In other words, it was hard to get at. It made up for that by also being hard to use, requiring a serial-to-USB adapter to even get it attached to a laptop computer, itself not the easiest way to lug around update data. Now it is simply a matter of bringing a USB flash drive to the airport, one of which was even provided by Dynon!

Then it was fuses. Lot's of fuses.

Just in case a fuse blows, Van's even provides spares and a rack to keep them in.

Amazing!

The switch/fuse box is screwed into the center panel.

Which is then screwed into the supports. Van's had me countersink the panel in order to use flush mounted screws. I don't like them; I'll be using the old 'button top' screws for the other two panels. They better match the color of the panels.

With the center panel in place to support it, we were able to then install the tray for the comm radio. It was a pretty tricky job involving half a dozen very small screws and lock nuts, but once it was done the Garmin SL-40 radio slid easily into place.

The transponder, which in the D-180 world was a separate Garmin panel-mounted component, is now a module that mounts to the firewall. It rides in a mounting tray for easy removal, but I am unclear as to why I would want to be able to remove it. In any event, the tray ran into a little interference from a rivet that had been punched through the firewall from the other side.

I simply trimmed the tray a wee bit.

And the transponder itself never noticed.

The transponder antenna cable screwed in easily. The display and controls for the transponder are built into the Skyview display, so yet another data cable bundle runs over to the J-box to provide input to the Skyview display. There are so many of these loosely wrapped wire bundles that I started wrapping all of them in the plastic wire wrap I bought from Aircraft Spruce. This makes the bundles so much cleaner looking and it is so cheap that I can't understand why Van's doesn't ship some with the kit.

I ran out, though. I'll have to clean these up later.

Having tired of being clean, I decided to roll around on the floor for awhile. While I was down there, I installed the comm antenna. I thought that I would be kicking myself for not having installed the optional nutplates for the antenna base to screw into, but it was actually quite easy to do without them.

The transponder was even easier. Pete took his turn on the floor and pushed the base of the antenna up through the belly skin and I threw a nut on it. It took no time at all. Well, no time at all if you don't count the time that it took Pete to get up off of the floor. Maybe I should have done that part....

Finally, it was time to install the main Skyview screen. Piece of cake.

I went ahead and added the right side panel just for completeness.

Not a bad day's work, eh?

Bonehead!

I called Van's the other day to request my documentation packet. This is the collection of paperwork that I need to fill out and submit back to them to prompt them to send me a Bill of Sale. It also causes them to send an FAA Form 8130-15, or at least I hope it does, because that is one daunting form! It's much like a tax form in that the only thing more opaque to the casual reader than the form itself is the instructions for how to use it. And, as we will see a little later in this post, my reading comprehension of even the simplest instructions can be, now and then, quite lacking.

Van's customer service is always a pleasure to work with, and this interaction was true to form:

"Hi, I'm builder number such-and-such, and I need my documentation packet."

Cynthia: "Oh, congratulations!"

They clearly know that this means that the plane is almost done!

On the other hand, my dealings with the FAA have just begun. The FAA, not surprisingly, become very interested in my goings on when it appears likely that I will be taking to the skies and overflying innocent ground-bound citizens in a home made airplane. Can't argue that, right? They should take at least a cursory look at the quality of the assembly job before putting the citizenry at risk. I'm all for it too! After all, I might not hurt anyone on the ground, but I definitely will have my own skin in the game. The more experienced eyes that I can find to look over my work, the better!

But, as mentioned above, there is a mound of inscrutable forms to be filled out, and it all has to progress in a rigid, immutable order. An airplane is nothing but an expensive and sophisticated piece of abstract sculpture without the requisite paper trail pushing it along through the air. This is why it is important to contact the local FAA guys early in the process.

The easiest way to accomplish that initial contact, at least for someone like me that spends most of the day in front of a computer, is to submit a request via the FAA.gov web site. I did so and received a call from an FAA representative within just a few days. He had me sit down at the computer and winnow out the appropriate forms on the FAA web site and bookmark them for later retrieval. It was all going swimmingly until I made one fatal error: I mentioned that I had attended the required 16 hour training course to receive an inspection authorization and it would be nice to get that paperwork submitted as part of the overall documentation exercise.

"Wait, what?" he asked. "Are you building an LSA?"

"Uh, yeah," I timidly responded, having picked up on the negative vibe.

"Oh, well.... we don't do those. You have to get a DAR for that."

A DAR is a Designated Airworthiness Representative. It is, in less lofty terms, an individual designated to perform tasks too common or onerous for the Feds to deal with. It is very, very common, but mostly in the case of performing private pilot checkrides. It is exceedingly rare to take such a lowly check ride with an actual FAA examiner. Note that I am NOT criticizing this way of doing business with the taxpayer; the designated examiner gets paid by the aspirant, not the taxpayer. I think my most recent flight check cost about $100.

Fair, that.

The thing is, there are only two DARs close enough to come to Grove City, and both would have to drive a goodly distance. For this, they charge in the $600 range.

Not so fair, that.

Que sera, sera, and you can't take it with you. It's only money.

Cold comfort, that, but sufficient to the need, despite the penurious nature of my budget this late into the build.

I had no sooner settled into the idea that I would have to arrange my inspection with a DAR when a different FAA guy called me. It seems that they have decided that it is high time that they learn how to deal with an LSA and that they would use my inspection as a learning event. This isn't as risky as it sounds. They have inspected hundreds of home built planes; it is just the somewhat different paperwork that gives them pause. The conversation went quite well. These guys don't wear the Cloak of Unctuosity one might expect from a Federal employee. In fact, at one point the guy felt that he needed to warn me that he would be inspecting my work with a critical eye and that it was very likely that he would find something that I would need to fix. He encouraged me not to take it personally. I'm not sure why I would take offense at a guy trying to save my life, but I inferred that he had encountered responses like that before.

If I didn't have enough on my mind with all of that going on, I also had to solve a little dilemma of my own making. It's time again for the annual Arts in the Alley, which is a local art/crafts show put on by Grove City. Part of it is a photography competition, and I like to enter. The best I've ever done is an Honorable Mention (which I like to call '4th Place' or 'One Level Better Than A Stick In The Eye'), and that was years ago, back before the competition got so tough. I am allowed three entries but they also have an additional 'In Memory Of' award for photos featuring flowers. I had misunderstood that to be a completely separate category and therefore allowing of a fourth entry. Reading comprehension: lacking. But wait, it gets worse.

So, laboring under my incorrect understanding of the rules, I printed and framed four entries:

When I re-read the rules and realized that I was only allowed three entries, I had a problem: I couldn't decide on which three to enter.

Eh, it could wait. Off to the hangar to do some work.

What??! I have to countersink some rivet holes in my freshly powder-coated panel?? Oh no! What if it chips off the powder-coat?

No worries - it went fine.

Those rivets support a piece of metal that will help support the big 10" Dynon screen. There were others that would hold nutplates in place. Squeezing nutplate rivets is something I have done literally millions of times (with a nod to Joe Biden, who literally loves that word to death!) and I could pretty much autopilot my way through it.

Or..... not. Hey, look! A rivet to nowhere!!

If I was nervous about countersinking a hole in the panel, I was beside myself with worry about drilling out a rivet! It all turned out okay, though.

Back when I was still in the TSA phase of the Skyview conversion, I had to cut the four wires that ran to the autopilot disconnect button in the lower panel. Anxious to never make me take so crass an action ever again, Van's has me install a four-pin Molex connector on the wires to the switch so it can be more easily removed should I ever again need to do so.

I have never crimped a Molex pin, so I was kind of worried about how to do it. Here's what I figured out:

Looks good! What a relief! On to the next task, which is to put the pins into the Molex receptacle.

The other side of the wires, the ones in the airplane, will get Molex connectors crimped on too, but I didn't want to mess around with figuring out how to get them separated.

Instead, I decided to make the 1/2" hole in the lower panel for the switch to fit through. If I was worried about drilling out a rivet... well, how worried was I about using a Uni-Bit, not the suavest tool in the toolbox, to rip open a 1/2" hole?

A lot!

The hole turned out fine, so I went to install the switch.

Oops!

There's no way that connector is going through that hole. Chagrined, I went back to the instructions to see where I went wrong. And there it was, as plain as day: I was supposed to have put that connector on the wires in the plane, not on the switch. That, as you've surely surmised, comes later.

So, now I need to figure out how to get those pins back out of a Molex receptacle. I figured that perhaps I should save that for a later day when my mind might not be so distracted with other problems.

Smoke...

It won't be long now until I apply power to the airplane and its associated subsystems. In the vernacular this is known as a "smoke test," perhaps for obvious reasons, perhaps not. The idea is, of course, that no smoke appears at all, and if it does, that it comes out of something relatively cheap, easy to replace, or if you're really lucky, both.

Because I'm getting close to the point where all of the smart little boxes get installed into the airplane, I thought it might be a good time to take the instrument panel parts out to be powder coated. For those not in the know, powder coating is:

...a type of coating that is applied as a free-flowing, dry powder. The main difference between a conventional liquid paint and a powder coating is that the powder coating does not require a solvent to keep the binder and filler parts in a liquid suspension form. The coating is typically applied electrostatically and is then cured under heat to allow it to flow and form a "skin". The powder may be a thermoplastic or a thermoset polymer. It is usually used to create a hard finish that is tougher than conventional paint. Powder coating is mainly used for coating of metals, such as household appliances, aluminium extrusions, and automobile and bicycle parts.

I want you to make note of a couple of things. First is that it "create[s] a hard finish that is tougher than conventional paint." I thought this would be desirable for the instrument panel. In retrospect, it would have been desirable in a lot of other places too, but it's too late for that. Second, note that it is "cured under heat."

Here's why that matters. When I stopped by the hangar to pick up the instrument panel pieces, I impulsively also grabbed the two steps that will be mounted outside the airplane to provide a means to climb up onto the wing in order to get into the plane. These steps will see rough duty, and they were already starting to rust just from sitting around in the humid hangar, so I thought I'd go ahead and get them coated too. Doing so would add $25 to the bill, but I thought it was worth it. I dropped them off last week and was told to expect a call midweek to let me know when they were done. Well, I got a call all right!

"Hey, I'm calling from the powder coating shop and I was wondering if there was something inside those steps you wanted powder coated. We put them in the oven and they're spewing clouds of smoke!"

Uh-oh! I had completely forgotten that Van's had me pour fuel tank sealant down into them to keep water out!! That stuff smells to high heaven anyway - I can't imagine the smell of it burning! Soooo, the steps didn't get powder coated. But the panel looks great!

I am in the middle of what has been described as the hardest part of the Skyview conversion, which is the routing of some wire bundles from the avionics bay back to the back end of the plane where the main computer will be installed. I pulled the biggest bundle through a few days ago, so all that was left was a pair of two wire bundles. These are the ones that I used heat shrink on to protect the little gold pins. I may have shared that I thought that idea would prove to be either brilliant or stupid and only time will tell.

It did.

It's not a great place to work from a comfort point-of-view.

But I managed to get both bundles through without breaking off any of the pins. The heat shrink was a brilliant idea!

No, really, I was thrilled! You just can't tell because the 90% humidity made working conditions pretty ugly.

So there it is! A lot of work for just eight wires, no?

I sure hope none of them smoke!

On Letting Go...

There comes a time when you just need to let go. Whether you are a mentor, parent, teacher, or jailer, at some point you will have to step back from those under your guidance or tutelage and allow your protege to make his or her own way through life. And so it is with Van's. At some point, it would seem, they decided to just let us figure things out for ourselves now and then.

At least that's the way I felt about page 42D-20.

I had been putting off this rather intimidating looking page for a few days, hoping that the dry weather that was providing such a fertile ground for the airborne pollen that had my allergies torturing me more than I can ever remember would move aside in favor of an air-cleansing rain.

And so it was that I finally found myself coughing and sniffling a little bit less, but now plagued by the irritations that arise when a young, energetic dog, who has become used to being able to play fetch every day of the week, finds a wet yard blocking his routine play time. Desperate to escape the plaintive whining and ceaseless staring (of the dog, to be specific), I headed out to the hangar.

Here is the task at hand, writ in Sanskrit:

I knew this day of reckoning was going to arrive someday - the hint of complexities to come was delivered with this additional bag of wires labeled 'REV 1' and 'Fix-1'. This bag seems to be an adjunct to the bag that contained a beefy coil of wires labeled 'WH-00026'. The words/word fragments 'REV' and 'Fix' have a special connotation in the lexicon of RV-12 building. They mean that you have fallen squarely in the middle of preceding builders who encountered a problem with the kit and subsequent builders who will receive parts that make no reference to revisions or fixes. While it is better to be in the middle group than it is to be in the first group, it can still cause a bit of anxiety.

Inside the bag was a small wisp of wiring (I hesitate to even call it a 'bundle' or 'harness') and a single, lone, unattached wire. And no more. No explanations, no special directions. Nothing.

So, to the main book of plans to see what is to be done. "Find the WH-RV12-HEADSET wiring harness... and cut off any wire connectors leaving as much wire as possible."

Here they are:

"Crimp the (WHT/BLK) shield wire coming from the WH-RZ194 and WH-RZ195 into one end of a splice. Find the WH-RZ944 (WHT/BLK) wire coming from the WH-00026 Option Conversion Harness...."

Yeah, bit of a problem there. There was no wire coming from the harness in question. I could only assume that the wire in question was the lonely, unattached wire included in the Fix-1 bag. It was starting to become apparent what the problem the early adopters ran into may have been. It would seem that someone had forgotten to install these wires at the factory. For kits that were put together before a manufacturing change could be put in place, Van's just sent along the raw (well, slightly distilled, anyway) materials for us to figure out for ourselves. They were letting go; there would not only be no hand holding on this, there wasn't even to be the whiff of a hint.

That was my theory, anyway.

I opened the back shell of the WH-00026 and sure enough, there was a vacant hole where the Sanskrit drawing showed a BLK/WHT wire.

I went ahead and stuffed the provided wire into the appropriate socket.

I hope.

That just left the mystery of what the WH-RZ194 and WH-RZ195 were. I had a pair of suspects matching the description, but they were travelling under the aliases PILOT and CO-PILOT. I can't think about the subject of aliases without laughing; have you ever filled out a job application where they ask you to provide any current or formerly used aliases? I have, and I always wonder if the designers of the form are fully cognizant of the purpose of an alias. I mean, what was the point of using one in the first place if you're just going to tell the world about it anyway?

But I digress. I was pretty sure that PILOT and CO-PILOT were the guys I was looking for and that their real names were WH-RZ194 and WH-RZ195, but I didn't know which was which. I went looking for help on the internet and was able to find the answer. I recorded it for posterity.

They next mystery was similar: there were ES 320559 and ES 320682 splices referenced on the drawing, but no way to determine which was which in the bag of parts.

I went with a line-up to flush out the identities of the provided splices.

Counting worked.

A great deal of splicing ensued. After the BLK/WHT splices, I had to do GRN/WHT splices. The single GRN/WHT wire was also not installed in a back shell, but it was found attached to a few other wires that also weren't installed in the back shell.

Splices were attached to the PILOT and CO-PILOT bundles.

Matching them up with the Fix-1 wires was easy, but I had to make sure to keep the appropriate matching colors correctly matched to their new mates since there were two of each.

This is where Van's fell silent. I was on my own from here. I decided to clean up the mess of new wires rather than just leave them in a loose bunch. Tie wraps first:

Then I wrapped the whole bundle with the ugly yet functional orange stretchy silicone stuff I remember from back in the day when I was working on SR-71s. The Lockheed guys that built those amazing jets could make those bundles look pretty good; I can't.

Still working under the assumption that I should put the loose ends into the connector, I went ahead and did so. I added separate heat shrink for each bundle to ensure that I would have at least some chance of telling the wires apart and getting them into the correct holes.

Heat shrink shrunk (with heat - that's why it's called 'heat shrink'), the bundle bundled, and tie wraps added for decoration:

I also bundled the two separate bundles together? Why? Because Van's had had enough of my independent thought. They told me to.

I am starting to detect a theme here. A lot of color-coded connectors are gravitating towards this same little area.

I wonder if it has anything to do with this colorful little box still sitting back home on the parts shelf:

I'm sure they will tell be soon enough.

Maybe.